


Somewhat Beloved

by dirtyicicles



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, M/M, drabbles that hurt somewhat, seriously tho it's just an angsty drabble, what a way to reintroduce myself to the two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-09
Updated: 2017-08-09
Packaged: 2018-12-13 10:11:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11757645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtyicicles/pseuds/dirtyicicles
Summary: Shiro's back. Which is nice, Keith supposes.





	Somewhat Beloved

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know, man. This stemmed from the literal first two sentences I thought of at like four am so here we are.

“You're not him.” 

Keith spoke the words carefully, tentatively, the tone like oil against water as they rolled from his tongue. Soft, subtle words, yet ones that rang with a ferocity against the confined walls of Shiro's previously quarantined room. 

The man in question sat in silence, eyes directed to the far wall. Keith didn't know how he'd allowed an imposter to move among them for so long, to touch _him_ like an old lover for so long, but maybe it had helped. Helped with the whole, _this isn't my Shiro thing._ Helped with the daunting realization that he'd allowed a stranger with faux memories to violate him like an old lover. 

Keith cleared his throat. 

Shiro said nothing. 

“Listen,” he started, mauve eyes trained on the dimmed lights that lined the room like a spider's lace. They offered the faint hum of a power unknown running their artificial veins, filling the silence with a heavy oppression that settled on both of their shoulders like a paperweight. Keith felt like he'd suddenly been left to grapple with the imminent gravity of a planet that wanted to drag him to the very core. He rubbed at the back of his neck, expression unsure as he allowed himself a moment to gaze at the other once more. 

“Listen,” he said again. “I could be wrong, I don't know. But I know as well as you do, that there's...something not quite right. Something missing. There always has been, but now it's just a little more...” 

He sighed, leaving the rest of his sentence to be formed through the thoughtless wave of a hand. This was all too much, a little more than they had bargained for. Keith gave up on it all, heaving himself against the bed with hands clasped at his forehead. 

“There's nothing wrong with you, I suppose. I just...I don't know. Things feel different. Like things have changed.” 

A question hung heavy in the statement, a desperation directed towards the one who usually shouldered the brunt of the responsibility between the two. Keith silenced himself, eyes trained on the stiffness in Shiro's shoulders, the tension housed in his frame. 

He was the same. 

But he wasn't. 

“I don't know, either,” Shiro finally sighed, hunched over to the point he looked smaller, more vulnerable. Keith's heart _ached,_ craving an intimacy that was near impossible for them at the moment. Keith wanted to touch Shiro, fingertips to fingertips, lips against lips, their desperate distance finally housed in the warm breathed exchanged between mouths. 

They _had._

But it wasn't it. It wasn't right. 

Keith looked away, slipping his hand against the bed sheets back toward himself. Shiro's eyes followed them, their hue darker these days. There wasn't a light left in their depths, replaced instead with an uncertainty that traced back to their wavering relationship, to his own demons that groveled in his chest and suffocated his words. 

Shiro was hurt, hurting, and Keith wanted to help. But there lie within the silence a lack of...everything. There wasn't anything, anymore, and the rift between them felt so wide. This wasn't the Shiro Keith had rescued back on that planet, when it was just their lonesome two, when Shiro had been dying and recited his idiotic rhetoric that Keith take over as the black paladin. 

This Shiro was different, distant, grown and hewn, something plucked from the depths of Keith's nonexistent fears. Though only two feet apart in physical distance, it felt like years had stacked themselves on top of each other, offering up a stranger to Keith. 

A stranger the others had come to accept, leaving him unsure. It left him wondering if the others even cared like he did. It left him wondering if he was overreacting. 

But the touch brushed against his knuckles reassured him he wasn't. The comforts offered from this Shiro were different, molded differently from _his_ Shiro's rituals. They were hesitant, untrained, just as unsure as Keith was. There was a raw virginity behind the actions that felt like a blossomed flowers gone rotten, a decay behind the moves that desperately tried to keep up with the vigor of Keith's excitement over having his lover back. 

It was a slow, steady, awkward thing. Not like the usual movements the two shared, a trained dance over the years, the practical mind-reading that had developed between the two. Conversations whole had unfolded between their mutual silences, whereas now, the silence left a static in Keith's brain that was impossible to wade through. 

It left him listless and hopeless, the comfort he craved six feet under with the buried, repressed memory of the one he needed most. 

He was here, and yet he wasn't. 

Shiro's eyes were heavy, the words lost from his own tongue. “It'll be something we'll have to figure out in the interim. I'm sorry, Keith.” 

He turned away, onto his side. Keith watched, feeling like a child. Raw, open, vulnerable. Shiro's distance was always something, had always been a given, but it left the blade between his ribs that much deeper as he nodded. 

“It's not a huge deal. Like I said, I...I don't even know anything myself, right now.” Keith rubbed at his side, his face turned towards the floor. The slope of Shiro's back was the same, an elegant curve that housed the tenderness of Shiro's old familiarity. Keith wanted to press into it, ignite a flame there he'd been missing for so long. 

But Shiro was quiet. Keith could see him blinking, staring at the wall. An enticing image, he was sure, that managed to enrapture the both of them. The wall seemed to do most of the talking for them, these days. 

It was...infuriating. 

Keith shook his head, bouncing a leg with arms draped against the knees. He hunched over, protecting the softest part of him through rigid postures and cold words. 

“We'll have to figure this out at some point. I won't let you keep living like this, shrouded in a mystery that's there even for your own self. You deserve your autonomy. The galra can't keep taking everything away from you.” 

The jab earned him a slight flinch, sucked air between clenched teeth. 

“You're right,” Shiro answered, defeated, lacking the luster of his usual self. “But it's like you said, Keith. I don't know, either.” 

Keith bit his lip. 

“We'll figure it out. Right? I know I sound like a broken record, but Shiro, you have to start believing me at some point.” 

Keith turned, poised at the waist, fist clenched against the sheets. “Shiro, _please._ I...I need you.” 

Broken syllables only managed to capture some of Shiro's attention, dragging his hollowed gaze back to Keith's. Keith trembled, shoulders masking a shake he willed to go away. 

It didn't. Like everything else, it didn't, and it brought the oncoming storm of a turmoil of emotions within himself that had him yelling. 

“I _need_ you Shiro! All those months, all of those years when you were just you. When you were gone, when you were distant, when you disappeared...it was nothing but you that kept me going. I don't care if you really are him or not, but god damn it, Shiro! I...I...” 

His words tumbled to the bed, devoid of anything but strife. The grief left over from the thunderstorm that was Shiro's return settled deep in his heart like a leaden weight, dragging itself to his feet where it made a home of the ground that wasn't even theirs. Everything was lost, foreign to his senses, and now Shiro was, too. 

Keith wretched himself away from a touch finally offered at last, but too late. Keith knocked Shiro's hand away with the spite of a child, a trembling pout tugging at his lips as he vaulted to his feet. “I suppose that's how it is now,” he glowered, staring Shiro down into the sheets. “I'm the black paladin. And you get to be the same way as you ever were. Tugging me along on a ride I was so determined to get on for you.” 

Shiro shook his head, his wide frame working him from the confines of the bed. 

“Keith,” he started, hands outstretched for his other. “Keith...you know that's not true.” 

And maybe it wasn't, but they were words that Keith shook away, turning away from as he attempted to slip free of a grasp determined to hold him. 

But he failed in the end, and he was left sobbing against the shoulder of the unfamiliar entity that had wormed its way back into his life. 

“You're right, Keith,” Shiro muttered, his softened words balancing on the more Shiro side of things. “You're right...one way or another, we'll figure this out. You just gotta stick with me. I know things are weird right now.” 

They were. They were and Keith didn't want to admit it, but he found the smallest of solaces in Shiro's words and nodded, ugly and small as he leaned back. He pressed his palms to the corners of his eyes, forcing his shuddering breath to steady in the one drew within himself. 

Maybe it wasn't his Shiro. Maybe his was still out there, by some chance. Maybe he was dead. Keith didn't know what to think. 

The only thing he could think about was the fact that Shiro was there, whole, even if not there entirely in the end. 

But he was right. 

They'd figure things out.


End file.
